Advances in Southeast Asian Studies

Negotiating Chinese Infrastructures of Modern Mobilities: Insights from Southeast Asia

2023-12-21T21:25:21+00:00

Since the launch of the BRI, particular modes of movement are integral to its vision of what it means to be a modern world citizen. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Southeast Asia, where China-backed infrastructure projects expand, and at great speed. Such infrastructure projects are carriers of particular versions of modernity, promising rapid mobility to populations better connected than ever before. Yet, until now, little attention has been paid to how mobility and promises of mobility intersect with local understandings of development. In the introduction to this special issue, we argue that it is essential to think about the role infrastructure plays in forms of development that place connectivity at the center. We suggest that considering development, mobility and modernity together is enlightening because it interrogates the connections between these interlocking themes. Through an introduction to five ethnographically grounded papers and two commentaries, all of which engage with infrastructures in different contexts throughout Southeast Asia, we demonstrate that there are significant gaps between official policy and lived experience. This makes the need to interrogate what infrastructure, mobilities, and global China really mean all the more pressing

Infrastructure Power, Circulation and Suspension

2023-12-21T21:43:08+00:00

This brief commentary begins with the premise that infrastructures are not neutral technical platforms upon which more interesting social activities (such as various kinds of mobility) occur. Instead, infrastructures are more productively understood as bundles of socio-technical relations, and these relations shape in often unintended ways the social, political, economic, and environmental effects of infrastructural configurations. Infrastructural power, then, is understood as a relational form of power emergent within infrastructural configurations themselves, rather than simply as pre-existing state power channeled through infrastructures. This approach suggests that mobility is more than just a social construction or an outcome of state policy, but is generated through infrastructural power. Drawing on research on new town development in China, I argue that new patterns of mobility – what I call ‘suspended circulation’ – emerge as effects of the spatial configurations created by infrastructures that have preceded urbanization in these places. These new patterns of mobility involve the continuous circulation of precarious labor throughout ever-expanding spaces of urban development. While this aligns in many ways with the modernist and developmentalist projects of the state, it also indexes a form of material power over which the state has limited control

Infrastructural Fragility, Infra-Politics and Jianghu

2023-12-22T11:21:52+00:00

This commentary responds to Tim Oakes' analysis of infrastructural power by examining the inherent fragility of mobility infrastructures and their political ramifications. It emphasizes the human element in creating and maintaining these infrastructures, highlighting the intricate interplay of political will, bureaucratic planning, technological know-how, and specialized skills needed for their implementation. The paper contends that the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly demonstrated the vulnerability of mobility infrastructures to rapid collapse. It further explores the concept of infra-politics, referring to subtle acts of resistance within these networks, which significantly disrupt their efficient operation. The Chinese concept of jianghu, representing a metaphorical space of alterity, is introduced to propose that infra-politics might evolve into alternative relational forms, challenging and potentially subverting the dominance of centralized networks.

Book Review: Tappe, O., & Rowedder, S. (Eds.). (2022). Extracting Development: Contested Resource Frontiers in Mainland Southeast Asia

2023-09-22T12:50:10+00:00

Book review of Tappe & Rowedder's recent edited volume on frontiers in mainland Southeast Asia.

The Deviated Route: Navigating the Logistical Power Landscape of the Mekong Border Trade

2023-09-27T14:54:19+00:00

In the past two decades, the Mekong region has seen an increase in infrastructure projects aimed at improving transportation and connectivity between China and neighboring countries. These projects feature border control points, customs checkpoints, and security forces, leading to state control over cross-border trade mobility. Logistical power has gradually penetrated the social life in border trading, selectively facilitating certain groups while excluding others. Despite the overarching influence of state control, local traders still assert their agency in shaping cross-border trade practices. However, the transport and border control infrastructures hindered small-scale trading during the global pandemic and filtered out less economically important goods from cross-border mobility. This paper highlights the dynamic relationship between state control and various actors in cross-border trade in the Mekong region. It calls for an inclusive strategy in developing border infrastructure, aiming to ensure equitable benefit distribution and actively integrate the voices and experiences of those most impacted by these changes into the planning and execution of regional projects.

The Politicization of Mobility Infrastructures in Vietnam - The Hanoi Metro Project at the Nexus of Urban Development, Fragmented Mobilities, and National Security

2023-08-19T09:41:04+00:00

This paper critically discusses the Hanoi Metro and its role in contemporary urban development processes in Hanoi. It aims to disentangle the complex interplay between the state’s urban development goals, local mobility patterns, and Sino-Vietnamese relations that influence discourses surrounding the Hanoi Metro. This paper argues that the Hanoi Metro project demonstrates that mobility infrastructures serve as an arena for state-society negotiations in Vietnamese cities. Rooted in the state’s vision of modernity, the metro is promoted as offering an alternative to individual motorized transport, improving urban traffic and mobility for all residents. However, controversies regarding corruption, safety, and Chinese involvement in the financing and construction of Line 2A have negatively affected public perception of the project during its construction period. The potential impact of the Hanoi Metro on urban mobility in a setting dominated by motorbikes is discussed using the mobilities paradigm, with a focus on local mobility practices and experiences. The findings are linked to broader discussions on Chinese investment and historically-rooted notions of modernity and civilization in the context of the long-term development goals of municipal authorities and rising anti-Chinese sentiments in Vietnamese society.

Chinese Investor Networks and the Politics of Infrastructure Projects in the Eastern Economic Corridor in Thailand

2023-11-19T04:27:19+00:00

This research examines Chinese investment and the impact of infrastructure projects on the Eastern Economic Corridor project (EEC), a special economic zone linking Thailand with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and China, which aligns with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Drawing on Actor Network Theory (ANT), this study analyzes emerging Chinese investor networks and the resulting negotiations between various actors such as the Thai state, Chinese and Thai investors, and local farmers. Many Chinese investors have moved their production bases to avoid the tax barriers raised by the United States or Europe, as well as to expand their markets in Southeast Asia. The Thai state offers tax benefits to foreign investors, allowing them to import raw materials and machinery from China, making their production costs lower than those of Thai investors. The findings reveal that the neoliberal state facilitates foreign investors through deregulation: enacting city planning laws that permit the establishment of industrial estates in agricultural zones, thus dispossessing farmers of their land. These factories can release toxic waste, thus impacting the local environment and livelihoods of nearby farmers. Thai business-people are often unable to compete with Chinese investors to match their bids. In order to maintain their positions in these economic networks, they build affective relations with Chinese investors. In addition, these affective relations attract resistance and indignation from locals dispossessed of land and resources.

Belt and Road Initiative in Northern Myanmar: The Local World of China’s Global Investments

2023-10-10T14:43:33+00:00

Macro-level discourses on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) firmly establish China as the sole agent in driving infrastructure development. This article contends that often obscured from view by the discourses on China’s dominance are the host country authorities’ exercising of agency in infrastructure development under their own jurisdiction. The paper focuses on the actions of the local host country authorities in developing an infrastructure megaproject as a part of the BRI in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State. Currently under suspension, the Myitkyina Economic Development Zone (MEDZ, also known as Namjin Industrial Zone) would make an ambitious spatial intervention with wider implications and risks. The paper scrutinizes the ‘strategies’ by the local authorities in 2019-2020 in their attempts to move the project forward covertly. These include exploiting the project’s designation as an economic developing zone to conceal its scale and the inclusion of a major urban development, lack of transparency, and alleged abuse of power.

Entangled Enclaves: Dams, Volatile Rivers, and Chinese Infrastructural Engagement in Cambodia

2023-09-05T20:56:06+00:00

This article seeks to advance understanding of the changing interconnections between rivers, infrastructure, and power relations as well as how these are increasingly shaped by a globalizing China and climate change. To do so, it analyzes damming practices in Cambodia and their evolution under a post-neoliberal, concessionary governing mode that materializes in enclaves of corporate authority under Chinese state-owned enterprises. Drawing from the literature on the political life of Chinese overseas infrastructure projects, this article develops the idea of ambiguously entangled enclaves. The focus is on the four most recent large-scale dams in Cambodia and the kinds of dis/connections, altered hydrosocial relations, and power dynamics they generate. The article highlights patterns of dis/entanglement that illuminate the role of Chinese infrastructural engagement in shaping new political-ecological relations and socio-spatial formations in Cambodia and beyond. It also adds insights into the multidimensional geography of enclavism in the Mekong Region.